Imagine waking up, fighting the urge to snooze that Samsung alarm, and looking at your Galaxy Watch as you get out of bed. Congratulations! You got an “Excellent” sleep badge.Upon returning from the bathroom, you are greeted by a soothing AI voice from your phone. It presents you with information about today's essentials.And as you prepare your morning coffee, the AI voice from your phone shares details about the weather outside, forecasts, potential traffic jams on your way to work, important daily news, today's appointments, and more.You can ask the AI assistant for more info or clarification on the fly and change the topic whenever you want.Call that amazingly sci-fi or depressingly dystopian. I'll call it a neat idea at its core, with the caveat that whether it is dystopian or not depends on other external factors. Factors like how that data was collected, where it was processed, how it was secured, and who may or may not use it for or against me.But more to the point, I think that's precisely the kind of experience Samsung wanted to deliver with One UI 8.0's Now Brief. You know — the amazingly sci-fi kind of experience, not the dystopian-feeling one, to be clear.Unfortunately, I don't think Samsung pulled it off either way. Now Brief is neither liberating nor distressing. It just exists, and I'm afraid it's rather plain and not very useful or exciting.Now Brief feels like an early concept of a better ideaThe best way I can describe my experience with Now Brief so far is that I'm not fazed one way or another. I'm only mildly disappointed by it, but I'm not really looking forward to it becoming better either.Now Brief just kind of is. It exists on my phone. I can take it or leave it, and I'm not sure I'll have the patience to eagerly wait for it to become the kind of impressive AI experience Samsung may have envisioned. Why do I feel so indifferent about it? I have some theories.One is that the AI-powered voice that reads your Now Brief cards aloud sounds robotic and not very convincing.Maybe it's because tapping the Weather card in Now Brief awkwardly launches the Weather Channel website in a browser window instead of launching the nicely animated Samsung Weather app in One UI 8.Or it could be because the news and YouTube cards rarely, if ever, show anything that aligns with my interests. I can certainly get better recommendations elsewhere if that's what I'm looking for.It's probably all of the above and more. Either way, at the moment, Now Brief feels undercooked and not that clever, futuristic, or deeply integrated with other apps and services — even Samsung's.On paper, Now Brief always seemed like the beginning of something that could change how I interact with my smartphone. And perhaps it will eventually. However, I get the feeling that I may have to wait a decade or more for that to happen, so I'd rather forget all about it in the meantime.For now, in 2025, I find Now Brief forgettable, and, oddly enough, it makes me rather apathetic about AI in general. If that was the plan all along, Samsung nailed it by making AI duller than ever. Want a new One UI 8 device? Check out the latest Galaxy phone offers Samsung Shop The post Samsung’s Now Brief is the AI that tries to excite you but puts you to sleep appeared first on SamMobile.